PASSING MUSTER: Loral Space & Communications says its proposed sale of spacecraft maker Space Systems/Loral (SS/L) to investors MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates has passed one regulatory hurdle. Loral says the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States has “concluded its review and investigation” of SS/L’s sale and found there are “no unresolved national security concerns with respect to the transaction.” Still pending is anti-trust approval by the U.S. Justice Department. SS/L expects the sale to be completed in the fourth quarter, an official says.

Inmarsat expects that costs for satellite-based flight deck safety services, which airlines typically use for ACARS (aircraft communications addressing and reporting system) messaging in oceanic regions, will be 30% lower than its traditional services when the SwiftBroadband Safety Services option is approved for use in 2014.

The heavy-lift Space Launch System that Congress ordered NASA to build is ahead of schedule in some areas despite an austere funding profile, with hardware for the first NASA exploration flight test being machined and a critical design milestone coming up later this year.

Houston — Unconstrained by budget forecasts, and even the limits of current technology, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s 100-Year Starship project is surging ahead with concepts for the first human interstellar mission. The program is taking a visionary look at propulsion systems that extract their fuel from dark energy, manipulate space-time or look to other sources that have yet to be dealt with.

Leaves execution of GOES-R and Joint Polar Satellite System programs an 'extremely challenging' proposition

The Senate is poised to vote early Sept. 22 on a bill to continue funding the government in fiscal 2013 — legislation that will freeze funding for all programs, including Boeing’s U.S. Air Force KC-46A tanker program in a year when its budget was expected to take off. In fiscal 2012, the program received $877.1 million. The fiscal 2013 request was $1.8 billion.

Has meanwhile passed the halfway point on its way to its first science destination area

JSC SUPPORT: S&K Global Solutions LLC, of Polson, Mont., has been selected by NASA’s Johnson Space Center to consolidate computer product support for the facility’s Engineering Directorate under a potential $50 million, five-year agreement. Effective Oct. 18, the contract includes a three-year, cost-plus, fixed-fee, firm-fixed-price agreement and a single two-year option. S&K Global Solutions’ team includes Booz Allen Hamilton, of McLean, Va., and S&K Aerospace LLC, of St. Ignatius, Mont.